Sidecut Reports

Talk about your soft launch — nothing says the genteel South like starting to sell WiMax services without so much as a by-your-leave. Looks like our pals over at WiMax.com saw what we discovered surfing around the Clear.com site tonight — Clearwire has added coverage maps for Atlanta, much of which it labels as “now serving.” Just call it WiMax for all y’all.

No official press release yet on the Clearwire site, but we will keep our eyes open and relay once we see it. Atlanta was one of the next scheduled markets on the rollout schedule Clearwire announced in March. The “launch” is just in time for next week’s earnings call, which should be interesting since it will be the first time the “new” Clearwire will report subscriber numbers for its Portland market launched in January.

One reason I was looking forward to last week’s trip to Vegas for CTIA was to see if my newest connectivity plaything — a U300 WiMax/3G USB dongle on loan from Sprint — would actually discover and hook up to the still-being-built Clearwire network in Sin City. If you were following this blog, you know that the historic linkup did take place. What was more impressive to me about the device, however, was the simplicity and robustness of the accompanying software, the Sprint “SmartView” manager.

(Editor’s note: Would the marketing department ever call something the “dumbView”? Just askin’.)

The screen grab above shows the first item of business for SmartView — it looks for a WiMax network. If you’re not in Portland, Ore., right now, the action is sort of like playing slots; you’re hoping for a winner but resigned to the reality that you probably aren’t going to find a 4G network. Though we actually did somehow get connected to the Clearwire Vegas network (more on this later), the seamlessness of the check-for-4G-if-not-then-3G process was incredibly solid, especially for the first rev of any such product. No manual was needed — if WiMax wasn’t around, the software made the decision for you to only attempt a 3G connection.

It might seem like a small thing, but for the savvy business user who is likely to be among the U300’s first customers, knowing exactly what kind of service you are getting is first and foremost — and Sprint has wisely designed its software to work in just that fashion. Such simplicity helps make the buying decision an easy one, or an easier one in any case.

In terms of form factor and performance, I didn’t get to check out the U300’s ability to work while mobile — since we were in essence pirating our way onto the Vegas network, it wouldn’t have been a fair test anyway — but for the several times I was able to connect to WiMax in my room at the lush plush Las Vegas Hilton, the connection was solid and as good as any 3G experience we’ve ever had. There was no problem viewing video, handling large files, etc., and speeds topped out at just over 1 Mbps or slightly lower:

From a physical standpoint, the USB connector flips to pop the card upright — guessing for antenna purposes, but it keeps desktop real estate issues to a minimum by going vertical. There is also a plastic gizmo and an extender cord in the U300 kit to prop it up atop a laptop screen, if you have or need that preference. The only aesthetic problems I had with the USB was that the LED is on the part of the unit that faces away from the keyboard — so you have to kind of peer around the thing to see if it is on. The other nit-pick was that the USB unit seemed to get a tad warm, not really a problem until you go to pull it out from the laptop. No burns to report, but wondering if that is a fix that will be needed.

Overall — it was a pretty impressive performance from a device that is so new to the market, and it worked even when it wasn’t supposed to — to us a sign of good engineering and simple, connect-it-first software. Though we’re not too thrilled with the current pricing and usage plans (there is the usual data cap of 5 Gbytes per month for the 3G service) we are betting those will change as Sprint and Clearwire get more aggressive with their 4G marketing. Our take is that wannbe WiMax warriors could buy this thing now and be future-proofed when WiMax arrives in your town.

It’s Clear-ly not meant to be operational yet, but with a loaner 3G/4G hybrid card from Sprint we were finally able to link up to the still-being-built Clearwire Vegas WiMax network today… but at a nice slow under construction speed:

Are we complaining? No! WiMax is happening, right here and now… from the 11th floor at the LV Hilton.

Since we’re knee-deep in new report creation mode here at Sidecut central, this post isn’t going to be too long. But some news nuggets from different parts of the communications world got me to thinking… is it time for Skype and WiMax to do the peanut butter-n-chocolate thing?

One on hand, you’ve got Clearwire experimenting with VoIP handsets in Portland, Ore., the town that may yet go down as the Capital of WiMax before this is all over. On the other you’ve got Skype (and Asterisk) talking about making it easier to interact with SIP and by extension, small business phone systems.

Now throw in some Skype mobile handsets and what do we have?

Probably not anything the Clearwire folks want too badly, since they are counting on VoIP subscriptions to increase ARPU. But… imagine how interesting a WiMax service pitch would be if you got a free Skype phone as part of the signup deal. If anyone wants to continue this conversation over drinks in Vegas, I’m buying…

The news release is out and it looks like Clearwire is going to be aggressive in 2009 with eight more launches: Chicago, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Dallas/Fort Worth as new markets, and upgrades to existing services in Seattle, Charlotte, and Honolulu. Then in 2010, adding New York (as we predicted), Boston and San Francisco, among others including Washington D.C.

UPDATE FROM CALL: Atlanta and Vegas will be first to launch, in “summer.” Chicago, D/FW, Philly later in the year.

MORE UPDATES: On the money — Clearwire says it has enough cash to last until 2011, with plans to spend between $1.5 billion and $1.9 billion in 2009.

MORE ON THE MONEY — CEO Ben Wolff says the company sees government stimulus funds as an opportunity for Clearwire to get build-out captial, but that “the plans revealed today do not rely on any government money.”

Clearwire also confirms it will offer a dual-mode modem like Sprint’s, as well as the (yea!) personal hotspot router we told you about first.

More after the call, which starts at 1:30 pm Pacific.

Updates: Some numbers from the release: New subscriber additions for (guessing mainly Baltimore) for October, November and December… only 5,000 users. That’s going to need some explaining. UPDATE: The 5,000 number is across ALL Clearwire markets, meaning that Baltimore is almost certainly less than 5,000 total. Clearwire says it doesn’t break out numbers by market.

UPDATE 3, 3/6: UPON FURTHER REVIEW: The Clearwire folks CONFIRMED today that the 5,000 new subs reported for Q4 DOES include subscription numbers for Baltimore. It’s extremely low, but that also reflects the almost complete lack of marketing since the “Xohm” operations were combined with Clearwire in November.

Explanation from call: Clearwire said that Sprint pulled back on marketing, and that the Baltimore network wasn’t really built out to the depth Clearwire would like. The company is going to re-launch Baltimore later this year after it builds out the network, and at that point the Xohm name will be retired. We hope.